Tomorrow, some 600,000 customers of Yorkshire Building Society will see the meagre interest they earn on their savings accounts shrink a little more.

The cuts of up to 0.25 percentage points are being made, so the country’s second largest building society says, to ensure a ‘fair balance’ between the interests of savers and borrowers and to maintain the business’s financial strength.

It’s not the first savings provider to shave rates – indeed cuts have been made by banks and building societies to more than 2,000 savings accounts over the past two years according to website SavingsChampion.

Yet no reduction in savings rates is ever welcome so I am sure Yorkshire’s defence of the cuts will do little to dampen the disappointment of those affected.

It has, however, tried to do things the right way.

As a result, after the cuts have been applied no saver will receive less than 0.5 per cent interest, which is in stark contrast to the pitiful rates on offer from some of Britain’s biggest banks.

To give just one striking example, savers in Halifax’s Liquid Gold account (an account made popular in the late 1980s by Arthur Daley of Minder fame) are now receiving interest of just 0.05 per cent.

No wonder the financial regulator is probing the savings market (its recommendations for reform are out later this year) amid concerns that the likes of Halifax are making hay on the back of saver inertia. Of course they are – it’s been blindingly obvious for years.

More...

Yorkshire has also improved rates for 900,000 savers. And in a sweet little gesture last week it announced that from tomorrow customers (members to use the society’s own lingo) of at least two years standing will be able to take out a Celebratory Children’s Saver account on behalf of any child (their own, a grandchild, niece, nephew or a friend’s) aged 11 to 15.

The account is a one year regular savings account with a minimum and maximum monthly subscription of £1 and £150. The headline rate is an attractive five per cent although someone subscribing for the full one year will earn an effective interest rate of just over 2.7 per cent.

It’s not the best one year regular savings account on the market for children in terms of interest – that accolade, surprisingly, goes to Halifax which is paying six per cent on monthly subscriptions of between £10 and £100 into Kid’s Regular Saver account.

But if you’re a Yorkshire customer (or for that matter a customer of one of its other brands – Barnsley, Chelsea or Norwich & Peterborough), Celebratory Children’s Saver would make a perfect and sensible birthday present for a teenager.

A big well done to the Church of England for finally disposing of its embarrassing indirect investment in Wonga, the controversial payday lender that thought it was OK to send out bullying letters from fake legal firms to customers struggling to clear their loans.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, says that he is ‘absolutely delighted’ that the Church is now out of Wonga and has taken no profit from it.

Let’s now hope that the Church’s move will prompt Premiership football club Newcastle United to terminate the sponsorship deal it has with this payday lender.

If I were a Newcastle United fan – or for that matter one of the players seen last week training on Tynemouth beach in Wonga tops – I wouldn’t be seen dead in Wonga clothing.